Living with Bipolar Disorder

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After over a week of numbing depression, I’m finally coming up for air.

Maybe it was the poor choice to message the ex that triggered it…or something else. All I know is for over a week I felt numb. No interest in anything…thus radio silence on the blog front. Forcing myself to cook…and eat. Making sure I actually ate at all some days. Feeling like all I wanted to do was sleep. Naps were my best friend.

Oh plus getting let down by a friend who made plans then got caught up with something never bothered to message me until an hour and a half after they were supposed to show. I ended up telling him to forget it since it was already getting late and he was going to be another hour or so.

Makes you feel super unimportant. Just lets the depression seep in more.

The last few days have been better. Had an appointment with the shrink, who’s adding a new med, that I can’t for the life of me remember right now. Which of course my insurance won’t cover without my shrink telling them I need it, so now comes the waiting game to get it approved.

It feels like the depression is creeping in again today, but the anxiety is worse. Maybe it’s the holidays coming up. I’ve always loved to give special gifts but being beyond broke I’m going to be making presents this year. I don’t mind. I know my family will appreciate them. But. I don’t feel like it’s enough. Plus. Putting on the happy face and attitude for thanksgiving with the family already makes me feel exhausted. I hate that. I love seeing my family. Getting to play with my nephews and niece.

But it just sounds exhausting.
The one bright spot in all of this is the new boyfriend. He tries so hard to help when I’m feeling like this, although it’s hard since we live in different towns and its a good 45 minuet drive…and me with no car. Makes it hard to see each other often.

It’s an amazing thing how you can have given everything you had to relationships in the past only to find out they turned all the bad around to make you the bad guy.

It’s been something like 7 or 8 years since my longest and most volitile relationship finally ended. We spent 6 years on again off again. Finally splitting for good when he left me for another girl…such is my life…regardless after some time we remained friends for quite a few years until I got tired of his continued verbal and mental abuse, constantly making me feel stupid and wrong for everything I did. Letting his friends verbally and mentally abuse me for years I cut him off. Now YEARS after not talking I find out through mutual friends that he has been turning the facts of our relationship around to make me the bad guy. He’s apparently been telling his fiancé that I cheated on him the entire time we were together. Not even close to being true. I was stupid in love and was blind to the fact that he cheated on me over and over and over. In fact I believe there was a time he wanted to stop and see a friend because of some reasonable explanation. I sat in the car…forever. Now that I look back. He was cheating on me while I sat in the damn car.

But oh no. I was the one who cheated and he was 100% faithful according to his fiancé.

Every relationship since then has always been me going out of my way to make things perfect, all while being ripped apart and put down.

I will never forget the day my ex fiancé told me one of the reasons he left me was he wanted to be with someone as smart as him.

Calling me stupid, while I held a BFA, a supervisor position at my job and all he had to show for himself was tons of failed collage classes and some time in the navy leaving him one job skill basic welding. To this day he hasn’t managed much better. But I’m the stupid one. Who as a side hobby does editing work for a photography studio even tho I can’t manage to work long I do a few photos every day.

Not that I’m trying to brag…I just need to remember what these people say is not true and they have to lie to make themselves feel better.

Which leads to the current ex. The lies he tells himself and others about me is astounding. While I struggled daily with my mental health, some days hardly able to function he spent that time cheating and planning on leaving me. But according to him I’m a pathetic person who’s life is going nowhere. Ect I know I’ve talked about all this already.

What makes me confused is how I will fully admit to the things I did wrong, or that maybe they couldn’t handle my mental illness, but never have I lied about the facts of things. Yet I am always the only one to blame for things ending. Maybe they just can’t face the truth of what they did was so wrong.

What a wonderful gift from my brain today…I was feeling less depressed this morning and by the afternoon I was in a full blown manic phase. I couldn’t stop talking, moving, trying to cook I’m not sure how I managed not to cut off a finger with how fast I felt I had to move.

Then everything started to fall apart, I’m in the middle of actually starting dinner cooking, some already on the stove, chopping the rest…and Grace wants in. And she’s COVERED in mud. She’s whining at the door I’m having a hard time focusing…some how I managed to breath and get through it.

Grace gets wiped down. No big deal…

Then…oh then comes paying my bills…my electric company’s phone lines arnt open today, and for whatever reason it wouldn’t recognize any of my information. I spent 45 minuets getting more and more frustrated. Then I can’t log on to my internet providers site, or my gas company. My mind was going too fast. I could feel the anger building. Finally exploding at my dad who was just trying to help.

In the end, Internet is paid, in my panicked state I misread the email. And Gas, I apparently needed finish setting up my account fully. The electric. No dice. The automated system won’t work, the website still won’t take my info even tho I confirmed I had it all right. My mind is still flying…I want it done right now so I can breath. Now it will be taunting me from the back of my mind all night.

I feel my heart racing and my hands shaking even now that I’ve calmed down and acknowledged where I am mentally. I’m still struggling through. It’s going to be a long night.

I fought hard against myself today, wanting to send the ex one last message. To have the last word before I bocked him again after the stupid 48 hour reblocking rule on Facebook. I resisted the urge. All I would have been doing is giving him what he wants. A reaction. The satisfaction of upsetting me using every way he knew possible.

I won’t let him have that. I won my battle by staying silent. Not freaking out and going over board in anger at his blatant attempts at hurting me. This is not something I am good at. My anger gets the best of me more often than not. It’s the one emotion that really gets the better of me most days.

Today I woke feeling…slightly better. The intense depression seems to be subsiding. I hope it is. The anxiety tho is through the roof. Plus this randomly bursting into tears and sobbing uncontrollably is getting old fast.

I had hope the increase of seroquel would help even me out, instead I feel like I’m drowning in my own emotions.

I want to feel…normal. I don’t think I even know what that is or if I have ever experienced it in my life. But I want it. Instead I’m probably looking at another change up on my meds that have been helping more than anything else has in years.

All I ever want to do is sleep. But today…today I must leave the comfort of my home, and cook dinner for my dad and stepmom. Usually a day I look forward to…today it just makes me feel exhausted.

I will not back down, I will take the step forward I need to push myself out of my home for more than a short period of time.

I feel like I’ve been ripped open and everything is just falling apart around me. The words my ex threw at me burn…worse than I even imagined.

I look back at the last 2+ years and all I see are lies upon lies. I’m not sure I know what is real anymore. Did he even care? Or was I just passable girl to be with until someone better came around.

Never did he attempt to understand me or my illness. He pulled the typical “just stop focusing on it and you’ll feel better”. Right it’s like telling someone who just broke their leg to just walk it off and they will be fine.

I looked past the verbal and mental abuse. The accusing me of not being able to trust me alone after a fight. Punching holes in the doors and walls. He just found every way possible to tear me down. And stupid me had to open back up that wound and ask him to return the things he stole. All I got in return is to be torn apart…left feeling as if I had been stabbed in the heart again.

All this because I refused to allow him to have “his” dog Grace. After he walked out leaving me with more pets than any one person could care for without being in an incredibly depressed state. Grace became my rock. My heart dog. When I was crying uncontrollably she was at my side licking the tears from my face. When the anxiety was so bad I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it through she was climbing into my lap…all 70lbs of her…and pressing herself against me so hard to help ground me. She became my reason to leave the house. I think the bond became so strong after she realized I was just as broken as she was. He still accuses me of keeping her only to hurt him.

Grace spent over a year of her life bouncing from foster homes to the shelter to being adopted and returned, abused so severely if you move to fast even to this day she cowers.

We both are recovering. I just need to learn better self control. No more messaging him. Blocking him and keeping him blocked.

I know I am strong. I’ve rebuilt my broken self many times over. I will not allow him to win and ruin me.

Long neglected blog, I have returned. I miss my outlet…sharing my struggles and triumphs with total strangers.

With my return I’ve changed my blogs name, as I have after all these years, have the official diagnosis. Aside from major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, possible borderline personality disorder….I am also Bipolar type II.

It took being kicked out of my previous mental health clinic (a long story for another day). Going from private psychologist to the next, and finding a private psychiatrist…I’m finally getting treatment that I should have been getting from the bringing of my breakdown.

I’d always suspected the possibility of being bipolar and was blown off by my previous clinic. Fun stuff.

To make things even better, just as I started to see a light at the end of the tunnel, it turned out to be a train to knock me down. The boyfriend of over 2 years walked out in the middle of the night, leaving a note saying he left me, with rent due in a week, two dogs, three cats, and his chinchilla to get on a bus and move Texas to be with a girl he had been cheating on me with online for months.

Apparently it was hell being with me, and I “fabricate things to get pity from others.” Such as a lovely photo making fun of people with anxiety that I apparently planted to get pity because he would never do such a thing…or that he was cheating, or that he stole from me. That I made up his violent tendencies that, I have holes in walls and doors that say otherwise.

He left his rant stating that I’m a pathetic woman in her 40s…apparently I slept for 7 years as last I checked I was 33. Oh and that I’m going nowhere in life.

I guess the one thing I can be grateful for is that the trash took itself out.

This all happened while being freshly diagnosed bipolar, major med changes…the thoughts of just giving up and killing myself swam through my brain.

Here I am, 3+ months later. I still hurt…having yet another guy leave me and blame my mental illness for it. But I’m also learning about myself and how I set myself up for failure in my relationships jumping in without truly knowing who the person is, and I, in the end am the one who gets hurt.

First I’d like to apologize to those who’s comments were not moderated in a timely fashion…I have been finding my motivation to do anything very lacking. Please know that I appreciate all comments and feedback.

I’ve given Pristiq just about a month now. I am not a fan. It’s giving me the feelings I had while on the Effexor XR right before I put myself in the hospital.

Unfortunately it’s been a waiting game of my old psychiatrist retiring and not having any available appointments between my med change and her last day. I’m now waiting until early September to see the new psychiatrist.

This led me to make up a list of all the medications and med combos I’ve been on since my teens. Knowing there have been times I’ve forgotten things when asked in an appointment.

So far this is what I’ve been able to recall including some dosages. Keep in mind this is probably from when I was about 15 to now (31).